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Socrates and Zuleika
(Hitherto unknown Socratic Dialogue)
"A major share of the world media is concentrated in Jewish hands, well beyond the wild dreams of the mythic "Elders" and this share is growing daily. In Chile and Argentina, in Kazakhstan and Canada, even in far-away Finland with its tiny Jewish community, the key media belongs to Jews. In Russia every outrage of independence-seeking Chechens is immediately compared by ubiquitous Judeophilic editors to 'Palestinian atrocities'. In the UK, the media is cornered by a group of extreme Judeophiles from Conrad Black to Rupert Murdoch, and ethnic Jews
from Michael Green to Richard Desmond. Just recently Haim Saban had bought another German TV network. As for the US, we have a good list of Jews in the media drawn by our friend Jeff Blankfort, available on the Web", writes Israel Shamir in his Spider Web. "Wait!" - wrote our reader Dr Zuleika Dobson from Cambridge. "Ought we to be interested in religion or ethnic origin of these men who own or edit media? Is this a legitimate question? Isn't it, ah… racist?" In order to answer the query of Ms Dobson, The
Applied Metaphysics Institute of Inner Mongolia conjured up the spirit of Socrates, this guide to wisdom, and turned the question to him. The following is a script of Socrates' conversation with Dr Dobson; references to Dr Dobson's eyelashes ("too long"), waist ("too narrow") and coffee preferences ("buy it from Nicanor next time") were carefully expunged. Socrates: Let us divide qualities into four categories. Some are irrelevant, and we can't have too much or too little of these. Some are so
bad that we can't have too little of it; some are so good that we can't ever have too much. Another category will consist of qualities we can have too much or too little thereof. To what category does 'Jewishness' belong? Zuleika Why, Socrates, we may safely exclude the second and the third proposition. Nobody thinks that Jews are so evil that there is no place for an Einstein. Nobody thinks that Jews are utterly beneficial that they can't produce a Sharon or a Dershowitz. But perhaps "Jewishness'
is irrelevant? Socrates: Your society considers group-belonging relevant. You have laws against employing too few blacks or whites, too few women or men. You call it 'discrimination'. Ethnicity and religion are possible discrimination factors. Thus, Greg Dyke of the BBC complained that, "the BBC is hideously white" . He considered his efforts to enlarge the ethnic representation of the BBC to be the "acid test" of his tenure. London newspapers write with trepidation about Arabs or the Russians
buying properties in that capital city. In the British media, a journalist is asked to what community he belongs. He is offered a long list of communities from which to make his pick, ranging from Muslim Bengalis to Catholic Croats, in order "to ensure fair representation of communities in the media". However, the category "Jews" is missing from the list. Zuleika Maybe 'Jewishness', like the ability to jump, is an irrelevant category for
a journalist? Is there a way to find out what is relevant and what is not, oh Socrates?
Socrates: Socrates: If a person can be discriminated against on base of a quality, the quality is relevant and other way around: if there is no way to discriminate according to a particular quality, then that quality is irrelevant. In other words, if there could be too little, there could be too much and vice versa. We can't have "too much" or "too little" of truly irrelevant qualities. Zuleika Very good, Socrates! Now we should find out whether there were complaints of having too few Jews in media, universities or administration?
Socrates: Indeed. Naomi Klein writes in her book No Logo that she began her political career by fighting discrimination against Jews on the boards of New York-based companies. She found out there were too few Jews, less than their share in the city population, on the boards of some companies, and fought this discrimination. There are many complaints by Jews that Princeton University does not allow its student body to consist of more than 40% Jews -- they consider that "too little". We can
therefore conclude that Jewishness is a relevant quality; if there can be too few Jews, accordingly, there can be too many Jews in the media, in an administration or at a university. |
